Beyond Evite: Top 3 Unique Invitation Sites

I'm frustrated with the state of online invitations right now. There's a plethora of sites, but you have to put a lot of work into developing a polished result. Finding templates a designer could use without shame is still like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. But as long as you have a pitchfork, here's where I'd start hunting.


Pingg
Hands down, Pingg has the best selection of plug-and-play designs, with options from Etsy artists, professional illustrators, and even Martha Stewart. Saves you time because you won't have to spend hours searching for a reasonable template and then customizing away its mediocre qualities.




Crush3r
A useful, attractive site with an inexplicable name, Crush3r eschews templates in favor of a very basic format (pictured above), which you can customize until it looks nothing like the original. Choose your fonts, colors, graphics, you name it, and the whole thing loads into a handsome, standardized interface with nods to the best aspects of social media design. Fortunately, anyone can make a quick, attractive invitation with a few keystrokes, but you'll need a good eye and some spare time if you want your invitation to stand out.





Paperless Post
This pay site brings your mailbox online, with invitations and greetings that mimic the experience of receiving a card via post. The designs are a little stale, they lean heavily toward preppy and classic, much like what you'd see in a stationery store's wedding invitation book. However you can customize fonts and colors, and the photo cards let you alter almost the entire design to your liking.






So how about you, are you irritated at how difficult it is to find a decent online invitation. Or do you know something I don't? If so, let us know in comments.

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Margaret Mason is the author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, publisher of Mighty Mighty Media, and a Twitter power user (@Maggie). Her personal blog, Mighty Girl was recently nominated for a SxSW Lifetime Achievement Award, and she was named one of Silicon Valley's Top 50 Influencers by Now Public.